Ptinus Dawsoni

Thomas Vernon Wollaston published this drawing in his book ‘Insecta Maderensia’ in 1854. In the book he thanks Westwood for providing the illustrations, ‘Particularly, however, would I draw attention to the valuable help which I have received from J. O. Westwood, Esq., whose pencil has been so elaborately employed in the figures which I am thus enabled to attach, and by whom many of the minutest of the dissections were accomplished, — with a degree of delicacy, moreover, to which I did not myself at the commencement of this Work (though I have since succeeded in anatomizing the larger portion of them, likewise) lay claim.’

200. Ptinus Dawsoni, Woll. (Tab. V. fig. 5.). Wollaston wrote the following about this species:

‘A most elegant and well-defined Ptinus ; and one which is hitherto unique, — the only specimen which has been detected, so far at least as I am aware, having been captured by myself, from beneath a stone, on the lofty weather-beaten ridge which constitutes the northern extremity of the Dezerta Grande, during my encampment there with the Rev. R. T. Lowe, at the end of May 1850. [...] I have dedicated the species to my friend Richard Dawson, Esq., M.D., of London, to whom I have been indebted for much kindness throughout many years ; and whose microscopic researches, in a higher department of natural science, have been long made known.’